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TALES OF THE TOWN: Part 26

Mrs. Wu was furious at her daughter, at her husband, at Danny, at everyone. She exploded at the bridge game she played every Wednesday with her lady friends; a minor bidding mistake by her partner sent her into a towering rage. She remained in poor health, with frequent headaches; Dr. Wu gave her Xanax. The big house they had lived in for more than twenty years was silent and gloomy during the daytime when the doctor was at work. At night, when he came home, things were tense.

Dr. Wu told her about his
interview with the police detective, Brown.

“What did he want?” Mrs. Wu
asked her husband.

“He’s investigating those
homeless killings.” Mrs. Wu had heard about them on local T.V. news broadcasts.

“What do you have to do with
any of that?” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” her husband
replied. “I guess he’s checking every lead he can. I got the impression they
don’t have a clue.”

“Well, what did you tell
him?”

“I told him what I know: nothing.”

“I don’t understand. Why did
he want to talk to you? You’re just a Kaiser doctor.”

Back at police headquarters,
Rosey also was thinking about Dr. Wu. An interesting character, he thought.
Slippery. What more did Rosey know about him? An investigation showed that he
had had a prior run-in with the law: in 2008, the Wu’s neighbors had called
police about a domestic incident, when one night loud screams and crashing
sounds came from their house. When officers arrived, they found Dr. Wu with a
black eye, a very drunk Mrs. Wu with lacerations on her face, and a terrified
Cindy—then only a teenager—hiding in an upstairs closet. It proved impossible
to determine who had started the fight, or why; neither Dr. Wu nor Mrs. Wu was
arrested. But the case remained on-the-record.

Rosey was curious. Police
departments have ways of finding things out that the public does not. Rosey
dug, prompted others to dig, and found: Dr. Wu had been in psychotherapy for
anger-related issues. This had occurred in 2009-2010—within a year or so of the
domestic violence incident. Rosey took due note.

The discovery of the newest
homeless victim, one Homer Coolidge, while not entirely surprising nonetheless
shocked Oakland. It was downtown, not on the furtive edges of the city but in
its heart. Moreover, this murder was particularly violent: the victim had been,
not only shot in the head as were the others, but mutilated in the face. Rosey
knew enough of the academic side of serial killers to understand that, at some
point if left unchecked, the killers gradually escalate their level of
violence. They grow bored with their initial technique and seek newer, more
creative and dramatic ways of expressing
their towering rage. In his study of the literature, Rosey knew that such a
development foreshadows, not a diminution of criminal activity, but an escalation
of it.

That day Rosey started on his
workspace, as he thought of it. He cleared a large section of a wall, hitherto
jammed with memos and shelves, and decorated it with small yellow index cards,
each with the name of the 15 known victims. Beside them he posted, on white
index cards, the names of persons of interest. These included everyone he had
already interviewed: Devon Camber and Dr. Wu among them. They were not “suspects.”
They were not even potential suspects; but they were all Rosey had. That was
how investigative work happened: you started with what you knew, no matter how
trivial or insignificant it seemed. From there, you took baby steps laterally.
Sometimes, leads evaporated into the nothingness they really were. But sometimes,
you stumbled across something shiny and meaningful.

Thus Rosey determined to add
two more persons to his interview list: Mrs. Wu, obviously, who probably knew
more about her husband than anyone, and could implicate or exculpate him
accordingly. But whom should he talk to about Camber? There was no wife, no family
members in the Bay Area. The councilmember knew everyone, and was known by
everyone, but seemed to have few personal friends. There was a rumor—but that’s
all it was, scuttlebutt—that Camber had a girlfriend; a cop on the beat
reported this. But no one knew her name, or where to find her. Rosey decided to
find out.